Steve Jones is the editor of SQLServerCentral.com and visits a wide variety of data related topics in his daily editorial. Steve has spent years working as a DBA and general purpose Windows administrator, primarily working with SQL Server since it was ported from Sybase in 1990. You can follow Steve on Twitter at twitter.com/way0utwest

We had an unexpected switch last weekend. My boss decided that we were ready to move from the Stack Exchange (SE) to an alternative, OSQA.net, without informing any of the people that work on the site. Needless to say this wasn’t a seamless transition, but it was fairly smooth. The… Read more

I’m not a big networking person. I know that it’s good for my career, but I’ve been lucky enough to get myself fairly well known, my picture is on daily emails from SQLServerCentral, and so a lot of people know of me. As a result, I don’t have to… Read more

I’ve heard this before, it came up in the Tufte seminar I took, and it also was something that grated on my nerves at TechEd recently. I was in a presentation and saw a slide titled “Agenda” that had bullet points like this:

I’ve been a judge in this contest for the last 3 years, and each years we’ve had really good finalists, but typically a couple that stand out above the others. As we’ve gone through the judges’ voting, we usually agree on 3 or 4 of the finalists and then debate…

I don’t travel a lot, but with the success of SQL Saturday, I find myself heading out on the road more than I have in the past. I’m not what you’d call an experienced traveler, and Brad McGehee, who travels a lot, constantly tells me I’m doing it wrong… Read more

Andy Warren (blog| Twitter) sent me a link recently to a piece written by Kalen Delaney on the recent SQL Saturday in Redmond. She gives us the reasons why she wasn’t sure they would be successful, but is pleasantly surprised by how well they are attended.

I’ve given quite a few presentations, one keynote with another to come, and attended many more. I’ve read a few books on how to get better, and then in an Edward Tufte seminar recently, I got another one.

Dr. Tufte mentioned the idea of a supergraphic, an image with a… Read more

I saw a post recently asking if there was an easy way to find the port a client was using on a SQL Server since someone had multiple instances. I asked for some information since there are actually multiple ports in use.

That’s saying something. AT&T, the company that built US telco, that gave us innovations from Bell Labs, including Unix. They got an exclusive deal for the coolest phone I have ever used, and I don’t trust them.

As the plane was landing the other day for SQL Saturday in Pensacola, I was struck by how amazing my career has gone. 19 years ago, working in a cube in a power station, programming dbase and Clipper applications. A geek at a desk.

A short while ago someone complained that some of the headlines on SSC were deceiving in terms of what they represented. A few people noted that webcasts or other headlines weren’t technical information, and they didn’t want to click through to find that out.

I was excited to attend the networking session last year at the PASS Summit. Andy Warren and I had talked about it quite a bit and tried to promote it as a way to build your brand and perhaps get a better job. We were concerned that networking is a… Read more

I had been hearing about Lil’ Buck and so when I finally caught up with Buck Woody (Blog | Twitter) at TechEd, he told me to wait a minute. Unwrapped, from a separate box in his bag, in bubble wrap, out came Lil’ Buck